Raabta
by The Readers Muse
Summary: "It's for science."


**Disclaimer:** I don't own CBS's "Zoo". Everything belongs to whoever owns them, my wishful thinking aside.

 **Authors Note #1:** Inspired by this prompt: _"who's the one of the two that is convinced the other doesn't remember a thing about their past life's until one offhanded comment about "omg that's just like that time you did that" and the one that knows about their past is just completely mind-boggled "wait, you do remember it too right?"_ – Set in 1x11 "Eats, shoots and leaves," directly after Mitch tastes the medicinal root concoction they will be using on the leopard after they lost their dart gun.

 **Warnings:** reincarnation au, adult language, humor, pre/established relationship, past lives.

 **Raabta**

"You sure about that?" she asked, eyebrows raised from her seat across from him in the back of the van. Looking at the mixture dubiously. Wrinkling her nose at the smell as it circulated the close space like the worst kind of funky perfume.

Mitch just shrugged. Mind clearly made up as he raised the dropper and stuck out his tongue.

"It's for science."

Her eyes widened. Goose-pimples hushing down her skin as that _oh so familiar phrase_ made her still. Swooping her heart into the bottom of her belly as the words took her back. Just like seeing him for the first time – for the first time in _this_ life – had above the lion enclosure at the zoo. Remembering another instance - another time, another place - but the same him. The same her. The same words. And the same meaning behind them.

" _It's for science…"_

He'd been hers back then.

Even more than he was now.

 _Her Michael._

 _Her husband._

"Augh! Tingles…" Mitch muttered as she clutched the curves of the wheel well. Wishing she could muster enough force to indent the metal and ground herself to the struts. Feeling a lot like a kite without a tether as she watched him turn back towards the front. Unaffected. "Hope it does more than that to the leopard."

Her heart was heavy. Sharded through with ill-placed hurt for the second time in so many weeks as she watched the moment pass by unmarked. She clenched her fingers into the metal until they hurt. Sending aching spears of pain through bone and sinew before she forced them to relax and regroup – clasped angrily in her lap.

 _He didn't remember._

She wasn't sure why she said it aloud.

Maybe she was just tired.

Lonely with the weight of carrying all this alone.

Maybe part of her just wanted something of _them_ to exist outside her own head.

And maybe there was a part of her - buried deep but forever spring - that still believed.

"Yes, well- science cares little for the desires and hopes of man, my darling. Dedicated as he might be to the craft," she whispered, finding something of that old pre-Victorian lilt still present in her speech when she echoed the words she'd said to him in his study the night of the MacTavisham's annual ball. Coaxing him out of his papers and discoveries. Craving his attention in more ways than one as she kept her secret – womanly and early as it was – close to her breast. Delighting in her own playfulness as he watched her over the trim of his spectacles. Growingly interested as she shook out the train of her new gown. "But I can assure you that science is a much harsher mistress to please than I. So, I do suggest that you entertain the one you _married_ this evening, sir. Or I shan't tell you of my most wondrous news until I can possibly help it."

Back in the present, Mitch stiffened.

Like an angry cat, the action was all spine but zero bend.

But when she looked up, he was right there with her.

"I don't- was that- what did you say?" he asked hoarsely, eyes wide and pale as he blinked repetitively. Like he was trying to convince himself that he'd heard her wrong or-

Hope was suddenly a living, breathing creature in her chest.

"You...you remember that?" she asked, breathless. Fingers trembling as she reached forward. Stopping just shy of touching him as the shitty road rattled them back and forth. "God, please tell me you remember. Ever since I saw you at the zoo I knew, but you didn't- I didn't know how to reach you without sounding crazy and-"

The needle and the eyedropper clattered across the floor. Making Abraham and Jackson turn in their seats. Confusion and concern sliding across their expressions as the jeep slowed. But she had no time for them. Not now. Not when she was so close to-

"…Luella?"

She shivered, find his hands and holding on for dear life as he struggled through it.

 _It even left his lips the exact same way._

It had been her name once. Playful and spritely and not at all the name for a proper lady. Much less one of high standing. Or so his austere mother claimed – seemingly vexed on her behalf - when she'd made the silver-haired matriarch's acquaintance.

"Oh… _oh shit_ ," Mitch rasped, head ducking down, just like he always did. Trying to cover some fit of emotion. But she caught him there. Tipping his chin up with the cup of her palm as her eyes blurred with happy tears. "Jamie? I didn't- I remember…. _I remember_ …"

She could tell the exact moment it all came rushing back.

When he lurched off to the side. Head hanging between his legs, palms on his knees.

"I might be sick," he warned, groaning when Abraham ignored Jackson's protests about the leopards and pulled over. Sending them bumping through a ditch before coming to a lurching stop. "Oh J _esus Christ_ \- it's like a sugar rush on speed…but more- awful."

Her smile so wide it was in danger of splitting her face. Scrambling over to his side of the jeep as she nudged into his side and just held him. One armed and awkward as he tried to catch his breath. Both of them ignoring Jackson and Abraham who were half out of their seats, mouths open and making sounds.

All this time he hadn't known her.

Not the way she had.

Something about her must have tugged at him – probably even the first time they'd met.

Something that'd kept him coming back.

 _Interested._

Something that'd made him stay.

Settling into the insanity that was now their life.

 _Their mission._

And now she was watching him come back to her.

Piece by piece.

She didn't know how or why, but they were here.

 _Alive._

 _Again_.

 _And god, it was perfect._

She rubbed her face into the warm of his shirt when his arm wrapped around her. Pulling her close as she inhaled greedily. Soothing that weeping, months old ache. The one she knew deep down had _always_ been 'd always been a piece of her missing. A piece that was restless, unsettled. It hadn't been until she'd found Mitch that she realized it'd been him all along.

"You guys okay back there?" Jackson asked, concerned now as he stretched between the seats. Half in the back with them as he snagged Mitch's wrist and counted out his pulse.

"Yes," she replied easily, humming through it until Mitch chimed in a half a second later. Preceding his answer with a low sound of disgruntled distress before-

"No."

They looked at each other. Eying each other down just like they had that moment in Harriet White's sitting room after luncheon. Getting a strange thrill at her own boldness when she engaged him in a debate over an article she'd read in the paper. Finding that his attention, once captured, was nearly impossible to shake, even if she wanted to. _Which she certainly did not._ Finding a new niche within herself as he tested her to her very limits. Forcing her to extend an invitation for evening tea at her father's house. If only to continue their lively discourse.

Poor Mrs. White had been nearly beside herself with the impropriety of it all.

But she hadn't cared a whit.

In fact, it'd only made her that much more determined to know him better.

He had been the first man who'd appeared to genuinely value and encourage her opinions. The first man that had been interested in her, rather than her fortune and connections. The first man who didn't have the faintest idea who she or her family were until her mother mirrored her request and had a servant deliver him a formal invitation. And in spite of his tumultuous temper, she'd been effectively lost to entertaining the attentions of any other man since that very day.

"Oh boy," Mitch muttered, letting his head thunk back against the side of the jeep. Blowing out a long breath as she rubbed his back soothingly. Knowing just where to press, where to soften her hands and where to dig them in as he gradually relaxed. Feeling the steady weight of him against her as Abraham looked at them with a strange expression. "I know that look."

She just laughed. Wholesome and unsteady as the metallic echoes burbled above her head in a chorus of happy, of consonant sounds. Resting her head into the crook where his shoulder met his neck as her toes flirted with the abandoned eye dropper.

For the first time in a long time she had a feeling everything was going to turn out alright.

* * *

 **A/N:** Thank you for reading, please let me know what you think. – This story is now complete.

 **Reference:**

"Raabta": is an Urdu word meaning- connection or relation. An inexplicable connection to another soul.

Luella: popular girls name in the Victorian era, English, meaning: "famous elf."


End file.
